Profumo's sacking from Privy Council stopped by Queen in act of clemency

By Chris Hastings and Susan Bisset

12:01AM BST 13 Oct 2002

The Queen personally intervened to ensure that John Profumo, the disgraced minister of war, was not struck off the Privy Council after his affair with Christine Keeler.

A note from Buckingham Palace indicating the Queen's wishes ensured that the Conservative MP was allowed to resign rather than suffer the further public humiliation of being sacked.

The Queen's intervention is revealed in declassified papers which show that in 1963, Harold Macmillan's government had wanted to strip Profumo of his counsellorship as a means of publicly distancing itself from the scandal.

The affair had already escalated into a national security scare following disclosures that Keeler had also slept with Yevgeny Ivanov, a Russian naval attache.

Profumo's attempts to weather the storm had backfired after he was forced to admit that he had lied to the House of Commons about his relationship with Keeler. Two weeks earlier he had been forced to resign from the government and the Commons.

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The only option left to ministers was to take away his membership of the Privy Council - a body of advisers appointed by the Queen and whose members are styled "the Right Honourable". Their plan, however, seems to have been prevented by the intervention of Buckingham Palace.

The Queen's views are revealed in a briefing note dated June 20, 1963 from an unnamed civil servant to Mr Macmillan.

It states: "It is necessary to decide whether, as an act of clemency, Mr Profumo, should be allowed to resign his privy counsellorship or whether, as an indication of censure, his name should simply be struck off. You may consider it would be preferable to allow him to resign and I understand from Sir Michael Adeane [the Queen's private secretary] that the Queen's personal inclination is likely to be towards this course."

A week earlier senior members of the government including Lord Hailsham, the then Lord Privy Seal, had urged the prime minister to make a public display of the Government's displeasure by stripping Profumo of his privy counsellorship.

In a letter dated June 12, Lord Hailsham, who was a political rival of Profumo, wrote: "The significance is purely moral and political. Profumo will never, I imagine, be allowed to act again in practice. The only question is whether his name is allowed to remain on an honourable list of private advisers to the Sovereign, and whether he is allowed to retain the right, surely strange in the circumstances, to style himself 'The Right Honourable'."

He added: "My own personal view is that he be struck off. He has shown himself unworthy to be associated with the Sovereign. He is a disgrace to public life. Membership of the Privy Council is a distinction we give to Commonwealth Prime Ministers and others, it is vital that its value should be maintained. Politically it is desirable that the government should show its disgust and condemnation of such conduct."

Eventually it was decided that a letter written by Profumo on June 13, in which he raised the issue of his membership of the council, should be treated as a letter of resignation.

He wrote: "I am quite clear that I can no longer remain a privy counsellor but how to divest myself of this cherished honour I do not know. I write to request that you take the appropriate action with Her Majesty the Queen."

The disclosures will be seized upon by those who have previously expressed surprise at Mr Profumo's re-emergence into society.

The former minister, known as Jack to his friends, was awarded a CBE by the Queen in 1975 for his charity work for the disadvantaged in the East End of London.

He also sat next to the Queen at Lady Thatcher's 70th birthday at Claridges where the former prime minister described him as "one of our national heroes".

Keeler has made no secret of her bitterness following the Profumo affair. In her biography, Christine Keeler, The Truth at Last, she is scornful that he was invited to a ceremony at St Paul's Cathedral to celebrate the Queen Mother's 100th birthday.

She told The Telegraph last night that she knew nothing of the circumstances surrounding Profumo's removal from the Privy Council. "It is not something I would like to comment on," she said.

Profumo is one of only three people to resign from the Privy Council during the past 100 years.

In 1997 Jonathan Aitken, a former chief secretary to the Treasury, resigned his membership after the collapse of his libel action against The Guardian newspaper and Granada Television.

John Stonehouse, the former postmaster general who faked his death and was then charged with theft and false pretences, stood down in 1976.

The last person to be struck off was Sir Edgar Speyer, a financier and friend of Herbert Asquith, the Liberal prime minister. He was convicted in 1921 of collaborating with Germany during the First World War.

Mr Profumo, 87, was unavailable for comment. His son David, who is reportedly writing his father's memoirs, said: "It's not something he has talked about or would want to talk about."